


ain't it a gentle sound

by am_fae



Category: Ogniem i Mieczem | With Fire and Sword (1999), Trylogia | The Trilogy - Henryk Sienkiewicz
Genre: Developing Relationship, Established Relationship, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Multi, OT3, Post-Canon, Trust Issues, sex for healing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-22
Updated: 2018-12-22
Packaged: 2019-09-24 16:26:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,489
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17104046
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/am_fae/pseuds/am_fae
Summary: It’s different the first time they’re together, after everything. Jan is there, kissing and touching her, and since Jan is there she feels safe and the fine white-walled room of their house with its carven bed and down coverlets is safe and warm and secure, and Helena feels nothing but love for both of them, a love she could drown in, as broad and all-encompassing as the sea.When they are alone –Jurko kisses her carefully, as if she’s made of glass.





	ain't it a gentle sound

**Author's Note:**

> Things are complicated for Helena and Bohun.

It’s different the first time they’re together, after everything. Jan is there, kissing and touching her, and since Jan is there she feels safe and the fine white-walled room of their house with its carven bed and down coverlets is _safe_ and warm and secure, and Helena feels nothing but love for both of them, a love she could drown in, as broad and all-encompassing as the sea.

When they are alone –

Jurko kisses her carefully, as if she’s made of glass. It reminds her of the chaste kiss they shared when she was but a child and he little better. A good memory. They go further.

Helena is not yet comfortable enough with Jurko to tease him about his hesitancy and reference holy icons. Not yet. She kisses him sweet and playful, traces his cheek with her hand. Jurko makes a sound almost like a growl and pushes forward, pressing into the kiss and towards the bed behind them, and Helena’s mind goes blank for a moment but the blankness comes from a series of intersecting thoughts that aren’t blank at all and _do you know what it’s like to have to prepare for someone having and hurting your body when you did not give it up_ – sabre slashes on her cousins’ corpses – “tomorrow I should be your husband and then what?” – Horpyna’s whispers sending her back to the mob pressing in, a hulking man tearing at her collar – _that fucking whip_ – blood seeping from a man’s cracked skull –

When she emerges from this momentary blankness, Jurko is several feet away and she hates herself for caring about the stricken expression on his pale face.

She manages a smile. “Maybe we should try this another way.”

 

“Don’t you trust me?” she asks.

“I don’t trust anyone,” Jurko bites out, and Helena furrows her brows. “I trust you but not because I _decided_ to – let alone ever thought you wouldn’t hurt me! It’s not trust it’s like _belonging_ –”

Helena thinks she understands. When Jan whirled into her life, she told herself to be careful. Told herself not to believe the sweet words of the handsome lach officer. But from that moment her heart was no longer her own.

“That’ll do for now, then,” she says, and watches Jurko clench and unclench his jaw before taking a step that looks more like falling, staggering forwards. More kindly, she adds, “I hope one day you can trust me, too.”

 

Helena wraps the cord about Bohun’s wrists and the lath of the headboard with a steady assurance that masks the anxious pounding of her heart. She ties it as tightly as she knows how (in fact, she has to cut through the leather later, careful not to nick Jurko’s skin); glancing down, she worries that, perhaps, her wild Jurko hadn’t expected to find his hands so completely trapped? Or – more chilling yet – are they trapped at all? Helena doesn’t like to be reminded of the horrible, superstitious fear Bohun still, sometimes, inspires.

 _Damn him to hell_ , her heart says, bitterly, poisonously angry, and all the more furious for loving him – for wanting him still. In such moments Helena’s whole heart is nothing more than a tangled knot of roots and thorns and sunless _loss_ –

With a breath, Helena returns to the present.

“Try to pull free,” she says. “I need…”

Concern, near tender, floods Jurko’s gaze. Obligingly, he strains at her knots, and in the moment his breath catches in his chest, sharp and ragged, she can finally breathe easy.

There is something wonderful about this new knowledge they share between them. With Jurko’s beautiful hands bound, he cannot hurt her.

 _Like a falcon in jesses,_ she thinks, but it’s not far from the truth – sprawled there, Jurko looks like nothing more than a wild bird downed, spread wings aflutter.

 _Beautiful_ , she thinks again.

Helena places a palm on his shoulder, runs her hand down his side like soothing a spooked horse, and Jurko trembles, arching up into her touch.

“Is this alright?”

“Good,” Jurko says, dark eyes fixed on her. “Good.”

 

There is no way to overstate the relief of safety. No rough, bruising grip on her shoulders, yanking her close. No wielding fist or pistol or sabre. With those murderous hands bound, perhaps Helena’s love even seems like… like another person, someone who had not done all those things.

 

One night she even dares to tell him so.

“You will never raise a hand to me again,” Helena says, like an incantation.

None of that noise about how he couldn’t have done it anyway. “Never,” Jurko breathes in agreement. His eyes follow her, dark swallowing up the bright blue-green iris.

 

When he finishes, trembling, beneath her, it’s only moments later and with a little help that she’s over the edge too, gasping and shuddering around him. Jurko’s eyes are closed, dark lashes a smudged blur against his cheek, and with a look of such perfect bliss in his parted lips it takes her breath away. Pushing herself off him – she wonders if he feels that same dull, satisfied ache – Helena reaches over his head and unwinds that soft leather from Jurko’s corded wrists. His freed hands move to embrace her; he seems to be trembling a little even now. Still laid out on the sheets, Bohun draws her to him gently, buries his face in her black hair, falling loose over her shoulders, strong arms round her waist. They hold each other in silence. Strange: Jurko’s strength has never felt comforting before.

 

“What are you thinking about, love?”

The day is chill and damp, but Jan’s hair catches the faint light where he rides at her side, and his amber eyes are warm. Their horses snort and nicker to each other softly as they continue at a walk, exhausted by a lightning-sprint race not a quarter of an hour ago.

Helena shifts. “Jurko.”

“Good or bad?” Jan asks – lightly, but Helena notices he’s closer than he was before, reaching over to touch her hand.

She smiles, then sighs, letting herself lean towards him. “Jurko.”

“Our own beloved tempest,” Jan quips.

Helena shivers, thinking of walls and fragile skin. “Don’t say that.”

Jan freezes. “I won’t, love. I’m sorry.”

In the silence she turns her free hand palm-up to clasp his own, his warmth an anchor and a comfort. He ducks his head a little, but not before Helena catches the slight curve of a smile. Jan strokes circles over the back of her hand with his thumb.

“I slept with him,” she says.

Jan’s boyish grin is eloquent. “I know.”

Helena bursts into laughter, blushing. “That’s not what I meant! I – It’s different when you’re not here.”

For some reason, this makes Jan go still, the expression in his lively eyes searching and quiet. Helena’s young husband has never been jealous, but for a moment she fears she’s caused him pain. “Oh, Halszka,” he says softly. “Different in a good way?”

Helena thinks of Bohun in their bed, straining against the bonds she’d tied and greedy for closeness, and feels her face get hot.

"I think so. There’s much that’s…sharp-edged, still, between us.”

 

Helena remembers the way Bohun’d stood before her in the Waladynka, at a frozen distance he couldn’t seem to bring himself to cross, declaring that she’d robbed him of his freedom in a terrible voice – torn deep from wherever it was that Bohun’s restless soul made its home.

Oh, Helena’d known Jurko well enough, by then. She’d even believed that she’d known him too well – _oh, unhappy girl,_ she thinks ruefully, _so scared and young!_

But she had not known how vastly, how terribly he loved her.

_I know not; but this I do know, that if I am misfortune to you, you too are misfortune to me. If I had not loved you, I should have been free as the wind in the field, free in heart and in soul, and full of glory…_

Helena had been transfixed by the desperation in those vivid eyes.

Jurko’s dark features were twisted by fury. The Cossack ataman looked as if he wanted to – as if he wished he _could_ kill her as he spat out, _Ask what you like!_

Her heart had called out for Jan – then, she’d still spoken of him as “Pan Skrzetuski,” but he was “Jan” in her thoughts – but she stayed silent and scared as Bohun insisted he could give her anything, anything she wanted, swaying on his feet at that invisible barrier.

Finally dropping to his knees, he’d taken her hand, his hungry kisses and bowed head a twisted echo of the old gesture of fealty. Helena had been so terrified that she never thought to wonder why Bohun couldn’t cross the distance between them, why he could only approach her by falling to his knees.

_Ask for whatever you wish – yellow gold, shining garments, bright jewels, willing slaves! Ask what you like, only not to flee from me – only stay with me and love me, O my dove!_

All that time – was this what he was asking for?

 

“Can I tell you a secret?” Helena says. “It’s not that much of a secret, but outside this house nobody knows.”

The only response is Jurko’s ragged breathing. Helena leans in close and kisses him.

“I love you,” she says. “I love you. You were my first love and I’ll go to my grave loving you.”

A strangled, choked-off _sound_ emits from Bohun’s chest.

 

Bohun rolls his shoulders when he sits up, back curving.

“Does it hurt?” Helena asks quietly. She’s noticed that he tends to rub at his wrists automatically when her gaze crosses his throughout the day.

Jurko shakes his head. His lips twist in a rueful smile. The sight tugs tenderness from Helena the way water wells from a spring.

Helena reaches out and takes his hand. Bohun startles a little at the touch, then stares at their intertwined fingers like a drowning man.

“I wouldn’t want to hurt you,” she says, and is nearly surprised to find it rings true.

 

Jurko’s hands run through Helena’s hair, freeing the dark waves from their long braid with clever musician’s fingers. Helena laughs breathless against his mouth, pulling him close to kiss, hands catching in his shirt, bunching the embroidered fabric. He’s wonderfully warm under her palms.

“So easily distracted, Jurko,” she giggles, and swings one leg over his hips, tumbling them both back against the mattress. Bohun gasps, his own laughter caught, transparent, in the frozen air – in the sweet, wild curve of his mouth. “Would you – Jurko, think, what if there were some raid calling and – my hair was still braided –” Helena beams down at him, shoulders shaking at how ridiculous the image is. In some moments it feels as if they’re the children who loved each other in Rozłogi, now free of fear.

Jan’s love, oh, Jan’s _devotion_ , is such a miracle that even now Helena teases him for it only very gently. But Jurko – beautiful, winter-eyed Jurko, familiar and a stranger all at once –

Helena’s grown up with this boy’s love.

With a light twist of Jurko’s fingers, dark hair spills down past her throat in a curtain, brushing his chest. One scarred hand is still entangled, resting gently against her scalp.

Helena would have thought to see him grin, boastful in the little victory. Instead, she finds her breath stolen away. The sudden stillness between them fills her lungs in its place.

“You,” Jurko says, hand slipping down to cup her cheek. “I’d pick you.”

The helpless words sound like an invocation. When Helena kisses him, it feels like bestowing a blessing.

Declarations rise, unbidden, to her throat, torn out by fondness: the sorts of things she’d promise someone she could implicitly trust _. I love you. I’ll always catch you when you open yourself to me. I’ll keep you safe._

“Wait a moment,” is all she says. Jurko’s breath is warm on her skin as she kisses him again, this time on the cheek, just at the corner of his smile.

The awed quiet in Jurko’s gaze remains unchanged even as Helena returns to perch on the edge of the bed – bare feet dangling beneath a shift of billowy linen, a scrap of silk between her palms. Something ephemeral, whose delicate fibers the famous ataman Jurko Bohun could tear in one motion, snapping thread like spiderweb.

 

He doesn’t.

 

An intricately woven kontusz sash, a soft, brightly-colored scarf Jurko brought back from the Crimea, a satin hair ribbon that Helena ties carefully, kissing where Jurko’s pulse beats against his skin.

 

“I never had another home or another family,” Bohun says slowly.

Helena freezes halfway through dressing: the morning is grey and hazy outside, and her husband is already below, having kissed them both in turn as they were waking – going out to receive a messenger from the hetman. The time they spend alone has lately been characterized by a comforting, uncertain safety; Jurko’s question – so unlooked for – threatens the borders of their peace.

Her heartbeat quickens.

_Jan, where are you?_

The ghosts rise up in Helena’s eyes, and she sees their counterparts in blue-green.

“How can you have forgiven me?”

“I haven’t,” Helena says.

(Praise God and all His angels, a simple question. Helena knows the answer: she’s had to ask herself a thousand times.)

Jurko’s sharp eyes are wide despite himself. He stares at her as one might a distant star.

Helena settles onto her side and strokes his muscled shoulder.

“Jan could have,” she says, and believes it fervently, the way you too would believe if a miracle like her love had crossed your path one ordinary evening and chosen against all odds to stay. “But not me, I don’t think. Not yet.”

“Then… why…” The Ruthenian words are soft, rough-edged.

“Life took enough things from me,” Helena says carefully, and then brashly, Cossack-fashion despite her sudden shyness: “I figured it owed me the chance to fuck my childhood sweetheart and tell him I love him.”

Jurko swallows. He looks as if he might try a smile. “I guess it does, at that.”

 

When Helena makes her way to their bedroom, candle in hand and weighed down by the long skirts of her day clothes, she hears Jan’s laughter, warm as bells. Jurko’s response, or what she can hear of it, can only be described as a growl, and the pine slats of their bedframe creak.

Her husband gasps, and Helena can’t help but smile – she knows that sound well.

She opens the door, and Jan, still mostly dressed, pushes at Jurko’s chest and disentangles himself. He pads over and slips his arms about Helena’s waist.

“Join us, love?” Jan murmurs.

Reaching to the side to set the candle down, Helena leans back to steal a light kiss as response, smiling against his mouth, and Jan _mmhs_ and lets her kiss him again, her hands rising to cup his face. They tangle in his cropped dark hair, burnished bronze in the candlelight.

Helena smiles at him a little shyly. When she sees how his eyes have flickered closed, the smile widens.

She takes his hand in her own and interlocks their fingers, rising on her toes to kiss Jan’s eyelids.

Jan grins.

 _Mine_ , Helena’s heart sings, lost in the delicate arc where his lashes shadow his cheek.

She glances towards the rich furs on their mattress. Jurko watches them with open hunger where he sprawls, half-sitting, propped up by his elbows where Jan had pushed him back.

“Won’t my husband take me to bed?”

Jan’s arm is back around her waist. When she stands by the edge of the mattress she scrambles for the fastenings of the long winter dress and Jurko rises from the bed to help, placing his hands on her waist before he undoes the laces so she knows he’s there. She startles a little, and her skin shivers – but it’s good, it’s good. Helena leans up to kiss Jan grounded in the light pressure of those warm palms, and then Jan reaches out with his free hand for Bohun’s mussed hair and leans over Helena’s shoulder to kiss him, pulling him close. Jurko’s hands go still and tight on Helena’s back, and she hears his ragged groan next to her ear, sending a jolt of _want_ through her body like lightning.

The heavy skirts fall to the floor, leaving Helena in her linen shift, and she turns between them to kiss the corner of Jurko’s mouth.

When they’re tangled together in the bed, warm and safe and wanting, Helena’s hips shift against Jan’s hands and his kisses steal her moans from the soft air.

“Zazulyu,” Jurko murmurs, and “moye serden’ko,” and Helena feels warm lips brush her throat, moving down to her collarbone. The Ruthenian words start to blur together, as if Jurko isn’t whispering endearments but a prayer, a poem, another one of his songs, each word reverent, molten, glowing like the banked coals in the hearth.

 

“For what it’s worth – I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. If I could take it back I would, you must know that, you –”

“I _mustn’t_ do anything,” Helena says, more sharply than she intended. She draws in a long breath. “I know you would take it back. Jurko, I know you would. You always want to take it back.”

Bohun is very pale. He watches her guardedly, as if he regrets how long they’ve known each other, how much of his heart he’s broken open for her to see.

“You told me once you would do anything for me,” Helena says, voice quiet.

“I meant it.” It’s almost a snarl. Her Jurko has never looked more like a wild animal caught in a trap. “I mean it.”

She does not want to be a trap. She remembers when she used to mean refuge and hope and peace, and when he used to mean hope too. But it seems now that their freedom lies only in these constraints. “I don’t need you to take it back. I need you not to do it again.”

Why does this make him look so – so stricken, so _terrified?_

“Helena –”

“Promise me,” she presses. “Promise me you’ll try, and when it counts you’ll succeed.” Helena is not going to tell him that she still dreams of Jan’s blood seeping across the yard of Rozłogi, or of fire and a bruising grip, or of every home she tries to build breaking inwards around her. She is too proud to tell this man such things. But she finds that her whole body is shaking with them anyway: shaking like a leaf in a storm. “ _Promise_.”

Bohun looks as if he’s about to faint. He forces the words out through pale lips:

“Helena, I swear it. By Christ, and all the love I bear you, and the rivers’ unending flow to the sea. My word is not smoke.”

 

One morning Helena grins to see Bohun blinking awake in the early light – positively sunny, for winter – and finds herself easily distracted by tangled black hair and moon-bright eyes.

“Good day.”

He sits up, the covers pooling about his waist, and watches her as if he could never drink in enough of the sight. When she comes near and kisses him, tasting first throat then lips, leaning into his chest and half on his lap, he groans and his arms slip around her waist, holding her close; he’s released her even before she moves to stand again. The fur-lined day robe is hung over the back of a chair when she turns back to him, leaving her clad only in one of Jan’s loose shirts and smiling.

Helena sits on the edge of the bed, reaching towards him, and Jurko makes the slightest of gestures, hands turning outwards a fraction. It takes Helena a moment to realize he’s offering her his wrists.

Something in her thrills at how instinctive the motion is. Yet, this morning –

_Those familiar, beautiful hands – the hands that first taught her to play the lute in Rozłogi. The hands that had first written Jan’s name and her own at her instruction, forming the clumsy characters with unduly single-minded focus from ink that gleamed like a raven’s wing._

Helena’s hands curl around her lover’s wrists. Beneath tanned skin and corded tendon, the smooth bones of his forearm feel surprisingly fragile, slender.

For some reason, the motion reminds her of Jan – Jan’s gentle hands holding Bohun steady as he cut through the coarse ropes that bound him and Helena, some paces away, found herself suddenly able to breathe. A memory steeped in affection.

She takes Jurko’s hands and pulls them close to her body, fitting warm palms and callused fingertips to the sharp curve of her hips.

“Helena,” he whispers, eyes gone dark and intent. She raises a hand to his cheek.

“And do you think I haven’t wanted you to touch me?”

**Author's Note:**

> This title is from Hozier's song NFWMB, which is lately super Bohun/Helena for me ("If I was born as a blackthorn tree/I'd wanna be felled by you, held by you/Fuel the fire of your enemies," etc)
> 
> Flashback dialogue adapted from Curtin's OiM translation


End file.
